![]() To begin with, it might do so by exploring the workings of proven strategies for resisting, evading or neutralizing power in its many forms and guises, for example as cultivated by ostensibly egalitarian or stateless societies from the Tsimihety of Madagascar to the Nigerian Tiv or the Amazonian Piaroa. ![]() How can, or should, anthropology contribute to promoting change at a grassroots (rather than policy) level? This in turn raises questions about the relationship between anthropology and political theory and practice more generally. While part of Graeber’s short and self-consciously fragmentary book rehearses critiques of capitalism, exploitation and alienation that are essentially those of Marxism, he also asks after the potential application of anarchist ideas to anthropological research. This same fragmentary quality may, of course, help to account for anarchism’s intellectual appeal in an era marked by scepticism towards grand narratives. ![]() The camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, less than a mile from where I write, is presently entering its fourth month of occupation after an extraordinary and turbulent year of popular protest, in which the decentralised Occupy and Anonymous movements, among others, have sought to embody in their own organisation and sensibilities many of the principles they espouse for a fairer society.Īcademic anthropology has embraced Marxism in a way that it never embraced anarchism, and Graeber – who has been closely involved in the Occupy movement – puts this down to the latter’s natural orientation towards ethical practice rather than universalist or “high” theory. Anarchist thought and practice has left its mark on a series of high-profile social movements over the past few years, perhaps even rivalling or supplanting Marxism as a source of inspiration for radical struggles. ![]()
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